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Jack had perfected the art of the silent sneak, prosthesis and all, decades ago. Even so, he relished the look on Robby’s face when he appeared out of nowhere only to snap a cuff on Robby’s wrist before he could turn the Bonneville on.
“Jack! What the fuck are you—”
And he relished it more when Robby’s words dried up, his mouth fell open and his eyes went wide at the sight of Jack locking his own wrist in the same pair of handcuffs. He held Robby’s gaze, unblinking, raised a key to his lips, and let the big galoot watch him swallow it, real slow and deliberate-like.
“Are you fucking crazy? What’s wrong with you?”
“Do you want a list, or…”
“Tell me you have a spare,” Robby said. His expression had snapped shut, and now he was turning a dull, furious red. “Jack, I swear to God!”
“No spare,” Jack said. “Wanna take bets on how long it’ll take to work through my system? I’m kinda stopped up lately though.”
“You’re such a—fuck!”
Robby swung his leg over the seat to dismount and yanked Jack none too gently back into the ED.
“The fuck are you two doing in here?” Dana shouted over the din. “I thought I told you to fuck off!”
“We need a ring cutter over here,” Robby said, loudly.
Jack let him have his moment, dragging him to and fro to find the goddamn thing while all their coworkers gaped at them, but when Robby had it in hand ready to go to town on the chain connecting them, Jack started thrashing.
“Jack! The fuck!”
He pitched himself forward and back and jerked his hand behind himself so Robby’s body smacked into his own and he was forced to hold the ring cutter up and out of the way. They stumbled into the nurse’s station and that was Dana, raining hell down on them.
“Are you thirteen years old? Is this the fucking schoolyard? You know back when I was in school, the nuns still switched your hands for putting a toe out of line and honey, I learned from the best!” She wrestled the ring cutter out of Robby’s hand and then rounded on Jack, poking a finger in his face. “And you! I thought you were the reasonable one! When you said you were gonna do something—”
“Wait, you knew about this?” Robby had the temerity to look betrayed. Shocked, absolutely flabbergasted. Dana whipped around to face him with a sneer on her face.
“What are we supposed to do when you won’t goddamn listen, Robinavitch? Now get the fuck outta here before I really blow a gasket!”
People were staring, Al-Hashimi included, and Jack registered the moment Robby realized it. His hackles went up and he went still. He ground his teeth together.
“Come on,” he bit out, and jerked Jack stumbling out of the ED. The cuff was biting into his wrist. Jack ignored it.
“So, my place or yours?”
“Fuck you, Abbot. How are we supposed to get anywhere? Do you realize I need to pee?”
“Hey, me too!” Jack said. “It’ll be a bonding experience.”
Jack started walking toward the garage, where his truck was waiting, but Robby planted himself next to the Bonneville with the all the stubborn energy of a toddler about to throw a tantrum. Jack’s shoulder twinged.
Jack slid in close, closer than he usually got. Close enough to feel the heat of Robby’s face on his own. He forced Robby to meet his eyes.
“If you think I won’t haul your ass over my shoulder, then you don’t know me at all, brother,” he growled.
“If you pop a hernia, I’ll fucking laugh at you,” Robby said.
“Hashtag worth it,” Jack said.
“You gotta stop hanging out with Shen and Ellis.”
“Who the fuck else am I supposed to hang out with when my best friend won’t take my calls?”
“Is that what this is about? You’re pouting because I won’t come out and play?”
“You’re so full of shit I can’t believe the Department of Agriculture isn’t breaking down your door for unlimited access to fertilizer.”
“I don’t have time for this. I was supposed to be on the road hours ago, do you get that?”
“Yeah, that’s not happening, man, I thought that was pretty clear.” Jack gestured into the space between them.
“This is a felony. You’re a felon. I should call the cops.”
“But you won’t,” Jack said. “Because you know they wouldn’t like what I’ve got to say about it.”
Robby turned his face away and closed his eyes for a long moment. Jack forced himself to take a deep breath and let it out in a long, measured stream.
“Come on,” he said. “I’m good to drive if you don’t go making it difficult for me.”
“Why are you like this,” Robby grumbled, but followed along after him all the same.
Jack had cuffed his right hand to Robby’s left exactly so he could still drive. Robby made his arm a dead weight, so Jack took some joy in being deeply ungentle when he shifted and fiddled with the radio and scratched his head.
“What do you expect to happen here, Jack?” Robby asked eventually.
“Well I thought we could get something delivered and then watch a movie real loud to drown out the sound of the fireworks.”
“You’re supposed to be on shift! And you’re on tomorrow, and the next day, and the next! I know because I made the fucking schedule!”
“I took some emergency leave.”
“Emer—for what, man?”
Jack pulled over, threw the car into park, and twisted in his seat to fix Robby with a glare.
“If you can look me in the eye and tell me you don’t have a plan to kill yourself, I’ll gnaw these cuffs off myself.”
Robby shook his head. He wouldn’t look at him. His breath came quick. Even in the dark, Jack could see his eyes had grown wet.
“Okay,” Jack said. His voice didn’t crack. He didn’t feel a tremor run through him. He did feel the shot of adrenaline that ticked his heart rate up. “Okay.”
“Jack, please.”
“If you’re asking for me to let you go, you know I can’t, brother. If you’re asking me for something else, then I’ll do anything in my power to make it happen for you.”
“Why can’t you just let me do what I need to do?”
“I wonder what you’d say if it was me inching off the metaphorical ledge right now, asking you to let it happen?”
“Fuck you, Jack.”
“Yeah, fuck me, man.”
Jack threw the car back into drive, Robby’s hand a limp fish dangling off his wrist. He pulled out into the road and the rest of the trip home passed in silence.
When they got through Jack’s door, Robby pulled Jack along to the bathroom with urgency. He swore as he wiggled his hips and freed himself one-handed. Jack stared at the far wall.
“You’ve earned this,” Robby said, and then Jack was treated to the sound of his stream hitting the water.
“Man, I was in the army,” Jack said.
“And what’s your plan when either one of us needs to take a dump, huh?”
“I’m a physician.”
“Patient shit is different from friend shit taking place directly next to you.”
Back when Jack lost the leg, he’d done a lot worse than need help toileting. And who was there? Robby. When Jack couldn’t bear for Christina to see him, when he wouldn’t even let her in the room, it was Robby who passed between them: friend, caretaker, messenger. When his wound got infected and required a revision and Jack hoped he’d die under anesthesia and screamed as much right into Christy’s face, it was Robby who held them both together. And then, ten years later, when Jack wanted nothing more than to follow Christy into the abyss, it was Robby who dragged him back into the world. What was a little poop after all that?
Too bad there was no point in saying any of it. Robby couldn’t hear him.
“Shit happens,” Jack said instead.
Robby scoffed. He flushed the toilet. There was more one-handed wriggling, and then Robby said “fuck it,” and dropped his pants to the floor. He kicked them off into the corner and flourished his hand out toward the toilet as if in genteel invitation. Jack nudged him out of the way and did his own business as necessary. He also kicked off his pants, leaving him in a scrub top, one sock, and his boxers.
Washing their hands was strangely both intimate and juvenile, punctuated with slaps at each other’s stuck hands as though they were children reaching for a cookie jar before dinner. Jack watched Robby in the mirror; Robby wouldn’t raise his eyes from the sink.
“You realize we can’t shower the hospital off without cutting our shirts off,” Robby said once they were ensconced on the couch and Jack had taken the leg off.
“I’m not attached to my fucking scrubs, man,” Jack said, rubbing the ache out of his residual limb. “I’ll cut them off, I don’t give a shit.” He eyed the fleece Robby was wearing despite the heat of July. At least his nice jacket was stuffed into the saddlebag they’d left on the Bonneville. “You married to that thing?”
“You can’t be serious.”
“Hey, if you’re just gonna check out anyway, what do you even want it for?”
“Oh ho, you’re joking about it now? Wow.”
“I’m bringing it into the light,” Jack said. “People don’t like to name it. Everyone hedges all the time in case saying the magic word gives people like us ideas. But just because you don’t say it doesn’t mean it’s not there.”
“It’s…uncouth.”
Jack scoffed.
“Nah, let’s be real right now, brother. What was the plan? You make it to Fuck My Shit Up, Canada, and you take that beautiful piece of machinery you spent so long restoring for a nice swan dive? But hey, if some stupid moves on the 2000-mile trip out there gets your ticket punched faster, well that’s just serendipity.”
“You got me all figured out,” Robby said. “You want a prize?”
“Man, what I want is for you to stop feeling this way.”
“Oh I didn’t think of that! Thanks, doc, I’m cured!”
Robby slapped him too hard on the shoulder right where he was shot. Jack suppressed a grunt so he wouldn’t give him the satisfaction, but Robby’s eyes glinted all grimly triumphant anyway.
“That’s not what I meant,” Jack said.
“Jesus, Jack, then say what you fucking mean.”
“I mean you’ve been screaming all day and we heard you, okay? We did. I did. So yes, I wish you didn’t feel this way. I wish I could take it away from you. I know what it is to feel this way and I’m not gonna let you fucking drown in it when I don’t have to.”
“You can’t just hold me hostage indefinitely.”
“You’d be surprised.”
“You need to sleep.”
“What’s a little cuddling between friends?”
“You need to go to your job.”
“Fuck my job, I can get another job like that.” Jack snapped the fingers of the hand attached to Robby. Both their wrists were red and sore and threatening to bleed. Robby hissed.
“For fuck’s sake, Jack!”
“What?”
“What’ll it take for you to get these cuffs off?”
“They’ll come off when I think it’s safe.”
Robby let out a bitter huff of a laugh.
“Seriously, what’s your plan here?” he asked. “Yak at me til I think life’s worth living again? You know that’s not how any of this works.”
“Would you rather I 302 you in front of your entire staff?”
Robby glowered at him.
“You wouldn’t.”
“Man, I would do literally fucking anything to keep you off that bike right now. You have no idea.”
“Why?” Robby’s voice broke. “Why can’t you just let me go?”
“Robby…”
“What do you get out of this, huh? I’m a fuck-up who does nothing but drag you down. I’m an asshole and a piece of shit and all I do is make everyone feel bad. Why would you even want that around?”
Jack’s throat felt thick and his eyes hot. He fumbled at their connected hands until he got his fingers slotted in with Robby’s.
“The fact that you’re even saying shit like that tells me you’re sick, man. And if you’re sick, there’s good news: we’re doctors. These are healing hands.” He held up the knot of their hands and jiggled it. “But in case you need to hear the words, then I’ll say them, I don’t give a shit. I love you, Robby. You’re my best friend. I don’t wanna be anywhere you’re not. I love you when you’re sad and when you’re angry and when you’re yelling at me. I’ll love you when you’re pissing, and shitting, and puking, and laughing, and crying. I’ll love you enough to let you hate me if it keeps you alive. You can be as much of a shithead as you like and I’ll still be here. Just don’t make me do this shit without you, man. I can’t go through it again, I’m not strong enough. If you go, I go, and that’s not a threat, man, I swear that’s not what this is, it’s just a statement of fact.”
Robby was staring at him. Tears had welled up on his lashes, and they dripped off now like morning dew. Neither of them spoke, neither of them moved.
“It hurts so much,” Robby whispered into the silence. “I just want it to stop. Why shouldn’t I be allowed to make it stop?”
“There are ways out without the nuclear option,” Jack said. “You know I know this. You know, Rob.”
“It’s different. You had Christy.”
“So, what, my life doesn’t matter now that I’m a widower?”
“That’s not what I said.”
“How come you think my life’s worth living but yours isn’t, hm? Tell me.”
“It’s not like that. It’s different.”
“It’s your fucking brain lying to you, man. That’s all. It’s your brain seeing how much pain you’re in and looking for the quickest way to stop it. It’s not rational, it’s not real, you get that, right? If we got a suicide in the ED we’d fucking stop it, wouldn’t we?” Jack ducked into his space to meet his eyes. Robby didn’t let him. Jack kept trying. “Wouldn’t we, Rob?”
“That’s the job. This has nothing to do with that.”
At some point, Jack had to admit he was talking to a brick wall. And that was all right, as long as the brick wall had a pulse.
“We need to eat. Come on, what are you in the mood for?”
They ordered more Vietnamese food than they could possibly eat. They talked half-heartedly about how the Pirates did today, how they’d do tomorrow. Jack told Robby about the fuckery he’d heard was going on up in neuro, and Robby ranted back about Whitaker’s farming romance. Jack tucked a smile into the corner of his mouth and looked at him slantwise.
“If I didn’t know better, I’d say you sound jealous,” he said.
“What, of Whitaker’s bizarre pastoral fantasy? Jesus, you couldn’t pay me enough.”
“Of this farm widow,” Jack said. “Of how much of him she gets.”
Robby’s brows pinched inward.
“You think I’m—Christ, Jack.”
“Why not? He’s cute enough, if you like that sort of thing.”
“Now it sounds like you’re into him. I could put in a good word for you, if you want.”
“You could have had a whole career as a goalie, the way you deflect.”
“Gimme a break,” Robby said. “He’d bleed himself dry if someone said it could help them. I’m just trying to help him keep good boundaries up so he doesn’t burn out.”
“Like you,” Jack said.
Robby leaned over to grab his beer from the table. Jack was pulled along with him.
“Like I said,” Robby said. “He needs better boundaries.”
Jack ended up smushed into Robby’s side. Neither of them moved to correct it. Robby smelled good, underneath the lingering miasma of hospital. They really would have to shower soon. The green fleece would just have to be collateral damage.
Robby fidgeted. They had to shift around to get their connected arms into a comfortable position, but they remained pressed against each other. Jack was close enough to hear Robby swallow.
“Maybe…” Robby trailed off. His knee started bouncing.
“Maybe…” Jack prompted.
“Maybe I liked it a little too much,” Robby said. “Whitaker having a crush on me. But now I find out he’s with this farm girl and it’s like…did I just imagine it? I didn’t even want him back, I just liked knowing it was there. Knowing he was there. Looking up at me like God.”
“Man, I don’t think he’s about to stop doing that anytime soon.”
Robby grunted.
“Besides,” Jack said. “You have all your little friends. Who’s this last one, Lexi from food services?”
“Noelle the bed manager.”
“Ah. Noelle the bed manager.”
“What’s that tone?”
“Nothing, dude.”
“How dare you slutshame me,” Robby said.
Jack laughed and patted Robby on the chest with his free hand.
“Does it help?”
“Does what help, being slutshamed by the number one slut of 1999?”
“No, all the no-strings sex with women who think they’re about to get the romance of a lifetime with the handsome chief attending of the ED?”
“Hey, I don’t promise them shit,” Robby said. “I lay it all out very clearly. No one even has hard feelings when it ends. Mostly.”
“Oh, well, as long as it’s mostly.”
Robby let out a theatrical sigh.
“And yes, it helps,” he said. “Until it doesn’t.”
“Let me guess,” Jack said. “It feels good in the moment. You get to be sweet to someone, and she’s beautiful and she touches you all nice, and for a little while you can trick the howling dog inside you into thinking sex is the same as connection. But it never is, because you won’t let anything through. You choose women you can never actually admire or be real with. It’s a nonstarter from the get-go. Meanwhile, if you actually wanted ‘just sex,’ you wouldn’t start up these emotionally confusing little flings, you’d just have sex. You play them, you play yourself, everyone loses.”
“I usually pay a lot for this kind of psychoanalysis, but tonight I get it for free.”
“I played that game, brother. You know I did. Everything you think you’re alone in, I’ve done. I’m not judging you, Rob, I’m telling you I understand. And besides, I think we both know you haven’t done shit to get ‘psychoanalyzed.’”
Robby stretched out his neck and rubbed at the back of his head.
“Look man, if you’re having an intervention on me you gotta pick a lane, and I’m telling you this one ain’t it. I feel bad about a lot of things, but not the sex, okay? Sex is good, sex is fun, sex gives me a fucking break. You should try it sometime.”
“I have sex.”
“Oh yeah, when was the last time?”
The truth was, Jack had plenty of sex. Actual no-strings shit, unlike serial monogamist in denial Michael Robinavitch. It was just that, after the initial burst of catting around with women following Christy’s death, all the sex he’d been having was with men. Grindr and gay bars were fruitful hunting grounds where everyone knew the score and opted in. No feelings, just fucking. And it was nothing Jack had ever told Robby about.
“Last Thursday,” Jack said.
Robby’s head whipped around, face twisted in incredulity.
“You’re fucking with me.”
“Nope.”
“Wait, who? Do I know her? I thought you might be starting something with Mohan but she told me today there wasn’t any way she was pregnant—”
“What the fuck? Why did she tell you that?”
“Never mind, you old whore!” Robby had split into a grin. He punched Jack on the shoulder. “Is it someone you’re seeing or just someone you picked up? Oh my God, do you have a girlfriend? Why were you flirting with Al-Hashimi?”
“I wasn’t flirting with Al-Hashimi! Which, by the way, you were absolutely fucking insane about, but now you’re throwing me a party for this girlfriend you’ve imagined up for me? What the fuck, Robby?”
“Al-Hashimi’s a shill and a plant, your imaginary girlfriend is a saint and a spitfire who makes you happy so I don’t have to worry about you.”
Jack rubbed his eyes with his free hand.
“I don’t even know where to start with literally everything you just said,” he said.
“Start with all this sex you’ve been having!”
“Haven’t you had enough for the both of us?”
“No!”
“It’s nothing,” Jack said. “It’s no one. It’s lots of people.”
“Oh my God, the number one slut of 1999 is back to take a run at the 2026 title! Hey, what do you recommend for dick chafing?”
“You’re such a little shit, Robinavitch.”
“Seriously, tell me your secrets.”
You said you’d do anything for him and you won’t even tell him you like dick? came a voice that sounded suspiciously like Christy’s. Which he resented. She’d been gone for eight years and somehow she was still kicking his ass. Jack straightened.
“My secret is that sex with men is easy and plentiful,” he said. The grin slipped off Robby’s face so he could gape at him more effectively. “If you’re up for a little mid-life strange, I could help you put up a Grindr profile.”
“I—”
Jack rolled his eyes and took a swig of his own beer, now down to warm dregs that should make him gag.
“Are you gonna be weird about this? Because coming over all homophobic on me isn’t gonna make me change my mind.” He waggled their linked wrists again.
“I’m not homophobic!”
“Okay, so stop making that face.”
“This is my shocked face! I’ve known you for almost thirty years! Is it, like, new?”
Jack sighed.
“We were talking about you,” he said.
“And now we’re talking about you, so spill, man.”
“No, it’s not new. I fucked around in the army before I met Christy. I would have fucked around in med school if—if.”
“If what? Holy shit, who? Was it Derek Stanfield? You were so weird about Derek Stanfield, man. Oh, wait, do you remember Wes Johnston? Now he was hot.”
“What do you know about hot guys?”
“I have eyes and I’m secure in my masculinity!”
“Okay, Wes Johnston was extremely hot but no, it wasn’t him. Can you leave this alone, Robby?”
“Oh.”
Fuck.
Jack turned away. He could still feel Robby’s eyes on him. He could always feel Robby’s eyes on him.
“It doesn’t matter,” Jack said. “It was a long time ago.”
“Jesus, I’m—”
“If you say you’re sorry right now, Robby, I swear to God I’ll text Gloria a love confession from your phone.”
Robby’s jaw snapped shut.
“Sex feels good and passes the time, I get it,” Jack said. “What I don’t get is why you have to string these poor women along to get some.”
There was a pause, and then:
“It’s not…always women.”
Jack whipped his head around to pin him with a stare. Robby grimaced.
“Are you kidding me?” Jack said.
“Look, you didn’t tell me, I didn’t tell you, sounds like we’re even in the cowardly pissbaby department.”
“Oh my God, are you keeping Whitaker around for a rainy day?”
“No! I told you I don’t want him like that!”
“What, he’s not your type? He looks at you with every heart and star in his eyes and you, what, aren’t into it?”
“He’s too—fresh.”
“What does that mean? He’s almost thirty. But congrats on your restraint in not fucking an intern, I guess.”
“It’s not—” Robby shook his head and scrubbed through his hair. “He has all this hope still. He thinks he can make a difference. Touching him would be like dumping oil into a pristine mountain spring.”
“Jesus, Rob,” Jack said with a sigh. “Of course he can make a difference. You make a difference every goddamn day, do you understand that? How many patients did you save just today, huh? How many people get to go home to their families because of you? You’re not fucking poison, Robby, you’re a goddamn miracle.”
Robby sank back into the couch cushions, staring at Jack with big liquid eyes. Unbalanced, Jack pitched into him.
“Maybe once,” Robby said. His voice rumbled through Jack’s viscera. “Not anymore. Everything I touch gets destroyed.”
“That’s not true.”
“I feel like I’m standing on the shore pushing the tide back with a broom. It’s too much.”
“Can you tell me what specifically? Like what is ‘it’ in this scenario?”
“You’re not my therapist, Jack.”
“Yeah, I’m something even worse: your fucking friend who loves you. Can you humor me even a little bit here?”
Somehow, they’d ended up with Jack half on top of Robby. If he pulled back to look him in the face, their lower bodies would press into each other. Even now, Jack could feel Robby’s leg hair tickling his own. They seemed to be caught in a stalemate of cuddling where any move would acknowledge said cuddling, and they could never do such a thing lest Robby get spooked like a prey animal.
“Robby,” Jack said, voice low. “If you didn’t want anyone to try, then why did I have Dana, Whitaker, and Santos pulling me aside to tell me the batshit things you said to them today? Everyone’s worried.”
“Dana’s in a fucking glass house.”
“And I’ve got another plan for her coming down the line, that’s not what we’re talking about right now.”
“You gonna handcuff yourself to her too? She will call the cops.”
“If you don’t start telling me some of the stuff that’s eating you, I’ll start saying shit you don’t want to hear.”
“Jesus, Jack.”
“Would it help if I told you some of my own shit?”
Another swallow, right by Jack’s ear. A sharp nod Jack felt more than saw. Jack took a deep breath of Robby’s funk, which he really did like a little too much, and let it out in a sigh.
“As the TEMS unit physician I’m supposed to hang back,” he said. “But I didn’t today. The bullets were flying and I waded in anyway.”
Robby’s free arm settled over Jack’s neck. He squeezed him. Jack closed his eyes and tried to pretend he wasn’t savoring the contact even when it pressed on the very wound he was confessing.
“I got hit,” Jack said. “And I don’t regret it because Hiro wouldn’t have made it if I hadn’t done what I had to, but the moment I felt the impact, it was like…if it had been the end I would have been relieved.”
“Jack,” Robby murmured.
“Why is it okay for you but not for me, huh?”
“You’re still…”
“What, Rob.”
“Alive. Living.”
“And you’re not?”
“I’m treading water, and I’m so fucking tired, Jack.”
“Whatever the fuck I’ve been doing isn’t living either, brother.”
“Bet all those guys on Grindr would say otherwise.”
“Don’t.”
“My point is you don’t hurt people with every move you make. You aren’t in a constant losing battle where there’s no right answer, only degrees of wrongness. You have your mom and your sisters and your nieces and nephews, you have your vet groups and things you do outside of work and people who look forward to seeing you, and I have fuck all, Jack. I have fuck all and there’s no one to blame for that but myself.”
“I look forward to seeing you. Whitaker definitely looks forward to seeing you.”
Underneath him, Robby’s belly rippled with a damp laugh. Jack didn’t have to look up to know Robby’s eyes were red, and his nose too.
“It’s just hard to look at the mess I’m in and not think about how every goddamn decision I ever made was the wrong one.”
“Depression’s a fucking liar, Robby. It’s telling you so much untrue shit I don’t even know where to start. All I can say is people love you, and you make every day better just by being in it.”
Robby shook his head.
“Every chance I got, I chose the job. I’ve made every partner I’ve ever had highly aware that they’d never be my priority. I can sit here moaning about being single and childless and whatever the fuck else, but I made damn sure that the job would be all I ever was, all I ever had. And now I can’t even do it right, do you see?”
Jack couldn’t leave it any longer. He propped himself up and forced Robby to meet his eyes.
“And if you never stepped foot in an ED again, if you decided to take up underwater basket weaving and Mongolian throat singing instead, you’d still be fucking loved, Mishka.”
Robby’s face crumpled. Tears slipped off his eyelashes.
“I wish I’d done everything differently,” he said in a harsh whisper.
Jack nodded.
“Yeah,” he said. “And I wish I’d never joined the army just to pay for med school. I wish Christy hadn’t fallen asleep at the wheel. I wish I’d fucking kissed you at that Y2K party. Hell, let’s go nuts! I wish my dad wasn’t a drunk asshole, I wish kale tasted like pizza, I wish the Catholic church never existed. Where’s the line, man? What’s reasonable to beat yourself up about, and what’s stupid magical thinking not worth wasting your energy on?”
“Just because something’s factually true doesn’t make it emotionally true,” Robby said.
“No, but you can disrupt the patterns your emotions get stuck in. You can let the people who love you help you dig out of it.”
That arm came up around Jack’s neck again and pulled him back down. At this point they were just straight up lying on the couch together.
“Tell me how it would have gone,” Robby said, low.
“How what would have gone?”
“If you’d kissed me at the Y2K party.”
Jack’s stomach flipped. He snorted out a little laugh but laid his head on Robby’s chest.
“Probably woulda ruined everything,” he said. “Some drunk handies and then you’d never look me in the eye again. No letters through every deployment, no misappropriated FMLA to help me when my leg got blown off, no talking both me and Christy down when shit got bad. Hell, she’d probably have divorced me and I’d have eaten my gun.”
“Or…”
Jack sighed.
“Or no Christy at all,” he said, and his heart hurt. Sorry, baby. “You and me and a trip to sunny Massachusetts for a marriage license as soon as I got discharged, is that what you wanna hear?”
“As long as we’re fantasizing, it might as well be good.”
“Fucking exactly, Robby.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“What, kiss you? Come on, man, you know why.”
“You can’t imagine that I would have hated you,” Robby said. “Even if you didn’t know how I’d take it, you had to know I’d never hate you.”
“I couldn’t risk it. The only reason I told you tonight is because there’s nothing left to lose, is there? You and me, we’re at the end of keeping shit on the inside. All our cards are on the table. You’re like three hours from seeing me attempt to take a shit.”
Robby barked out a laugh. Between them, Jack’s arm was getting crushed. With some reluctance, Jack shifted off him and sat up. Robby gasped in a breath and said, “Thank fuck, I gotta piss so bad.”
“Christ, why didn’t you say anything?” Jack said. He groped for his crutch and there was a clumsy song and dance where it became clear he’d have to use his cuffed hand for it, and Robby suggested he just use him instead. “Fucking fine,” Jack said, “but only because I care about your bladder and this couch.”
“You’re a real humanitarian, Abbot.”
Together, they hobbled to the bathroom and took turns pissing. Afterward, Robby laid his head back against the bathroom door, eyes closed, exhaustion carving haggard lines into his face.
“I can smell myself,” he said. “I need a shower and I needed it hours ago.”
Jack rifled through his drawers until he found a pair of scissors and held them up.
“You’re not fucking serious,” Robby said.
“Man, what do you think is happening here?”
“You have to have a spare key!”
“It only came with one!”
“Jack!”
“Here, I’ll start.”
Jack situated himself in front of the mirror. The scissors didn’t work in his left hand so he had to use his right to cut through a sleeve, the dead weight of Robby’s hand trailing after. He couldn’t do it on his own left sleeve, so he handed the scissors to Robby handles-first, looked him in the eye, and said, “I’m fucking trusting you here, brother.”
Robby rolled his eyes and cut Jack’s other sleeve. He grumbled over the fleece, but let Jack cut it off along with his scrub top and the t-shirt underneath. Jack watched in the mirror with bated breath as Robby peeled off the dressing on Jack’s wound and inspected it with a grim set to his mouth. Robby flicked his eyes up and met Jack’s in the mirror before stepping away.
They shucked their boxers, eyes cast upward, and lurched gracelessly into the shower together, where Jack sat down and Robby hovered half beneath the spray. When it became clear he and his stupid broad shoulders and thick body were preventing the water from hitting Jack properly, they had to shuffle so that he was seated too. At least Jack had gotten a whole bench instead of a seat, a little luxury from a time when he felt like splurging instead of endlessly punishing himself.
After washing their hair and scrubbing themselves down, they reached an impasse on their own backs. Their cuffed hands couldn’t reach without dragging the other along, which would have forced them into naked full-body hugs. Jack didn’t object, per se, but he was also painfully aware of the substance of their conversation about the possibility of them being just that: a possibility. A missed connection from a time long past. Whatever they could have had once, it had cooled into what they actually had now: the friendship of a lifetime. It was nothing to scoff at. It was nothing to be wistful about. It was also nothing to hug nakedly in the shower about. If Jack were to interrogate it, that interrogation would happen when he was alone, when Robby was safe, when he couldn’t see the yearning Jack had never quite been able to smother entirely.
“Okay, you do mine and I’ll do yours,” Jack said, pushing his washcloth into Robby’s free hand and scooting around enough to present his back.
Robby lathered him up slow and firm, cautious with his wound. Jack closed his eyes and concentrated on the flow of hot water over skin, and not how it felt to have hands lain on him with genuine care for the first time in as long as he could remember. He clenched his teeth. This is why Robby chose flings over one nighters, he realized. So someone would touch him with some semblance of genuine feeling.
When it was his turn to wash Robby’s back, he kept his attention clinical: eyes above the belt, taking note of a handful of moles that bore watching, instinctively checking for scoliosis. Eventually, Robby turned back around so they sat side by side, thigh to thigh. Buttcheek to buttcheek. Jack stared straight ahead.
“Jack.”
“Hm.”
“I did want someone to notice.”
Jack opened his eyes and turned to face him. Robby’s chin was tucked into his chest, his shoulders rolled inward. He was looking at his own hands twisting together while Jack’s flopped along for the ride. Jack turned his hand palm up. Robby closed both his hands around it.
“I know you did, brother,” Jack said.
“I don’t know what to do.”
“We’ll figure it out.”
“I’m scared.”
“Me too, man.”
“I’m scared of what happens if I do something I can’t take back, but what I’m really goddamn terrified of is waking up again and again and again and nothing fucking changing.”
“So let’s change it together, huh?”
“I have no idea how.”
“You don’t have to right now. All you have to do right now is chill out with me.”
“Naked in the shower?”
“Eventually the hot water’ll run out so I’m hoping you’ll consent to a scene change.”
“I’m tired, Jack.”
“So we can go to bed.”
“You’re really not gonna uncuff me?”
“Consider this a psych hold with better company.”
“Once again: why are you like this?”
“Dropped on my head as a baby.”
“Were you really?”
“Man, you met my parents. What do you think?”
In the bedroom, Jack threw Robby a pair of boxer briefs that had always been a little too loose, but proved perfect for Robby. Jack got into bed with his e-reader, because he wasn’t falling asleep anytime soon, but finding a comfortable position while tethered to Robby proved difficult. Neither of them were back sleepers, and spooning was essentially impossible, which left them on their cuffed sides, facing each other. Jack set his e-reader aside and settled in for a good stare. Not like Robby could stop him. Outside, fireworks went off like faraway bombs.
“I think you should stop running into firefights,” Robby said into the dark.
“Yeah, probably.”
“We could make a pact.”
“Robby…”
“You think I’m the only hostage here? I can be annoying too. Did you know I know everything there is to know about the 1986 Pirates roster and runaway hit TV show Dynasty? I can’t remember what I ate yesterday, but the shit from when I was twelve? I can’t get rid of it even if I want to.”
“I know it’s not the best thing to do, okay?”
“So promise you won’t do it.”
“It was the difference between Hiro living and dying, Rob.”
“And someday it’ll be the difference between you living and dying and that’s not what you’re there for.”
Jack let his forehead bonk to a rest against Robby’s. Once again he was reminded: anything means anything.
“If it’ll get you promise not to off yourself, then I’ll quit the TEMS unit entirely, how ’bout that?”
Robby shuddered, and Jack shivered under the breath that poured out of him. He could feel the fluttering of Robby’s eyelashes against his face. Robby clutched at Jack’s flank, trembling at first, and then quaking hard enough to rock the bed. Jack frowned.
“Hey,” he said. “Hey, it’s okay.”
Robby was gasping for breath and he couldn’t stop shuddering. Jack shifted closer, gathered him into his chest, stroked rhythmically through his hair and made soothing nonsense sounds, lips mashed into his forehead.
“We’re okay,” Jack found himself saying, “we’re gonna be okay, I’ve got you, I’ve got you, I’m right here, let it out, that’s it, I’m right here, I’m not going anywhere, we’re okay.” And, somewhere along the line, all that became, “I love you Robby, I love you Michael, I love you Mishka.”
The fear and pain burst out of Robby’s body in silent gasps, muffled sobs, and uncontrollable shaking. Jack held him through it, cried some with him. How long since he had held someone? Since he had been held? It was probably Robby then, too. The bulwark to Jack’s storm. Now, their roles reversed, Jack’s heart was in shreds, but there was a kernel of happiness at its center, warm and growing.
Robby was going to live.
Jack held him as he slept and followed him gamely back and forth to the bathroom at least twice. He finally fell asleep himself around three in the morning. A miracle occurred and they both slept past sunrise. Robby’s first act upon waking was to turn big bleak eyes on him and say, “Jack, if I hold my shit in any longer I’ll puke.”
“What the fuck, you’ve been holding your shit in?”
“I can’t be shitting while holding your hand!”
“Gimme a fucking second, Jesus Christ!”
Robby was buzzing while Jack rummaged through his drawers looking for his Swiss Army knife. He found it and flicked out the slim, flat bit that he’d never figured out the actual use for. He pulled Robby into the morning light pouring through the window, told him to sit still, and slid the shim into the ratchet groove of Robby’s cuff until the whole line of them pressed down and he could slide the cuff right open.
Robby shot up and ran out of the bedroom to a soundtrack of Jack’s laughter. Jack jimmied his own cuff open and slung the cuffs and the multitool into the back of the drawer. He rubbed at the abrasions on his wrist, wishing they were deep enough to scar. He wanted the proof of what happened here to live on his body forever, but they were barely more than friction burns and they’d be gone two days from now. He supposed the fact of Robby walking and talking and scratching his ass would just have to be enough.
Jack decided it was a wheelchair day. He put the coffee on and rolled out onto his back patio, where he transferred himself onto his porch swing. Maybe he should get a dog. Something three-legged and one-eyed, no hair on its tail. Ugly-cute, on death row. That would be just the thing.
Robby joined him, two steaming mugs in hand.
“What do you think of going around to some shelters and rescues today?” Jack asked.
Robby raised his eyebrows at him over the lip of his mug.
“I think the real move is taking your dumb ass in for an X-ray so we can make sure that key you swallowed doesn’t fuck your shit up.”
Jack flapped a hand at him.
“Meh. It’ll be fine.”
“It could perforate your bowel.”
“And the likelihood of that?”
Robby hesitated.
“Low,” he said.
Jack tipped a hand at him like there you go.
“I still can’t believe you did that,” Robby said. “Were you really gonna wait out your own BMs?”
“Man, be serious right now,” Jack said. “That wasn’t the key to those cuffs.”
“What?”
“I lifted those off one the SWAT guys, you think I got the key in the deal?”
“Then what the fuck did you eat?”
“That thing’s just been rattling in one of the charge station drawers for ten years, man, no one’s gonna miss it.”
“Oh my God.”
“It’s fine.”
“Okay, well, now I’m worried you’re gonna invent a whole new disease in there.” He poked Jack’s gut. “X-ray in a week, and I’m telling Lena to keep you honest.”
“Yeah, yeah. You’re just trying to get cheesecake shots of my innards.”
Robby rolled his eyes, but there was a smile buried somewhere behind that mug. The devastating crinkle of his eyes gave him away every time.
“So, what, you looking for a cat?” he asked.
“I’m thinking a dog. Some little weirdo everyone’s overlooking that needs me as much as I need it. If I’m gonna stop dodging bullets for sport and all.”
“Ah.”
“What, you think I shouldn’t?”
“No, it’s fine. Makes sense.”
“Then what’s that look?”
Robby rubbed his eyes and let out a long, billowy breath.
“I just…what are we doing, man?”
“What do you mean?”
Robby’s bouncing foot had the effect of jangling the whole swing and Jack’s skeleton besides. Jack set his hand on Robby’s knee to still him. Robby peered at him sideways.
“I know I’m fucked up,” Robby said. “I know it’s probably the last thing you need, a basket case trying to claw his way out of a death wish. But I was wondering…” Robby turned red and shrugged his shoulders. Wouldn’t look at him. Cleared his throat. “I was wondering if it was too late for all that stuff we missed, once upon a time.”
That kernel of warmth in Jack’s heart started doing a jig. Slowly, Jack raised a hand. Robby risked a glance at him. Jack petted through the silver at Robby’s temple, settled his palm on the back of his neck, stroked his thumb over the delicate skin over his carotid. Robby squeezed his eyes shut and melted into the touch. His breath left him in a rush.
“The good news is we don’t have to go all the way to Massachusetts anymore,” Jack said.
Robby looked at him with those ridiculous shining eyes.
“Is there bad news?”
“Yeah,” Jack said. “How insufferable we’re about to be.”
They kissed, scratchy and coffee-flavored and perfect. Above their heads, birdsong.
End